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When the Talking Newspaper Association of the UK was formed in 1974, the Rotary Club of Weybridge and Byfleet decided to start a talking newspaper for blind and partially sighted people in the area. Hospital Radio Wey offered to join the project by providing recordings of their Friday evening News Digest, so resolving the problem of the news side production of the proposed 90-minute cassette. Side two was to be a magazine.
The Thames Valley Talking Newspaper (TVTN), as it then was, first reached 35 listeners in the Weybridge and Byfleet area on 21st December 1975. The early cassettes were edited and copied on Sunday mornings on a single machine in the home of Pat Cole, of Radio Wey, for more than two years.
Then Walton Rotary joined the project bringing 40 more listeners with Esher Rotary joining in May 1977 and Chertsey Rotary following on in 1987. As word spread so TVTN increased its weekly circulation, and by the end of 1990 reached more than 200 blind and visually impaired people in the boroughs of Elmbridge and Runnymede.
Finally, Egham, the last remaining Rotary Club in the two boroughs, joined EaRTN in 1998. As a result EaRTN is now producing cassettes at the rate of about 15,000 copies a year, reaching some 200 blind and visually impaired people in Elmbridge and Runnymede.
As in all such undertakings, EaRTN is entirely dependant on the services of willing, unpaid, volunteers, who give between about three and 30 hours of their time each month. New recruits are always welcome and comprehensive on-the-job training is always provided. Anyone interested in joining the band of EaRTN volunteers, for whichever of the various tasks, but particularly for that of Recording Supervisors, should contact the Editor, Heinz Vogel. He will be very pleased to hear from them.
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